


Walk the Wire for You

by LadyKnightSkye



Series: Together We'll Cross the River [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Darcy Lewis, BAMF Jane Foster, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Non-consensual Medical Procedures, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Sociopathic character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-08 02:31:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11637087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKnightSkye/pseuds/LadyKnightSkye
Summary: The Winter Soldier and Darcy Lewis have escaped HYDRA, but not the things HYDRA made him do.Jane Foster has ended her relationship with Thor, and needs a place to regroup.HYDRA has lost an asset, but they're working on getting him back.These three things are, fortunately and unfortunately, not mutually exclusive.~~~~Or: Darcy, Bucky, and Jane's road trip to Hell.





	1. Studly Do-Rights, Do-Wrongs, and Do-Morally-Ambiguous-Things

**Author's Note:**

> Not gonna lie, I have been banging out these fics like nobody's business. Once again, the fic is finished and will be updated daily as I edit and proofread. Hopefully, the third part will be finished in the same timely manner as this one. 
> 
> Also, fair warning, this fic does contain some darker themes and subjects than the first part in the series. I will add any chapter specific warnings as needed (there are a couple of things that I wouldn't want to jump out and trigger anybody). 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you still enjoy this heaping helping of fluff, horror, and mood whiplash!
> 
> This fic's song is "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" by Bryan Adams. I own nothing.

_Search your heart, search your soul . . ._

Bucky took a draft of his beer. Before they went on in the epic story of Bucky Bear and Darcy Doll, it was decided that this might as well become a party. So, all the adults and older children had run back to their homes to fetch more food, drinks, and comfortable seating, except for Loki and Bucky. They’d volunteered to watch the assorted toddlers so that their parents could go get supplies in piece. Loki was currently holding little Lily up to the sky. Thor might have had the impressive bellow, but Loki could chew the scenery with the best of them. “And how are you, oh Winter Toddler? Have you driven your mother and father to the brink of insanity yet?”

Lily giggled. Bucky grinned at the Trickster’s antics, before snatching his beer away from groping hands. “Anh-anh!” he barked. “You’re just like your dad, sneaking into things you’re way to young for.”

Bucky peeled the young Parker boy from the wooden post of his porch just as Darcy, Grant, and Rebecca opened the back door and came out. Darcy was drinking one of her noxiously sweet hard lemonades, and he caught her letting Grant having a sip. “Hey!” he barked.

“What?” she asked hotly. “It’s not like he can get drunk.”

“He’s still underage.”

“Okay, Studly Do-Right.”

“Aww,” came a disappointed voice to their left, “Darcy I thought I was Studly Do-Right.”

Bucky glanced over to find Steve and Jane setting up their favorite wicker lawn chairs right next to the Barnes set. Steve and Jane’s were bright blue, Bucky and Darcy’s were white, and Natasha and Sam’s were red. Darcy smiled at him. “All of our former military men are Studly Do-Rights.”

“Ooo, didja hear that Tony, I’m Studly,” Rhodey called from where he was setting up his own comfy lawn chairs. His were a bit wider than everyone else’s to compensate for the robotic braces he used to walk. His wife, Evangeline, set up hers, and usually allowed a couple of kids to sit with her to fill up all the space. She was a pretty dark-skinned woman with bright laughing eyes. While Phil and Maria taught the six and over crowd, Evangeline took care of the toddlers. She was one of the few people other than Bucky who could get the Winter Toddler to calm down when she was going on a tear. 

“I’m Studly,” Sam said to Natasha who was giving him an arch look. 

“Yes, yes you are.” She chuckled while he preened like the bird he was named after. 

Tony put down his air-couch and hit the button to have it blow up. He turned and gave Darcy a glare. “Hey, I’m studly too.”

“Yeah, but not Studly Do-Right,” Darcy shot back. “You’re Studly Do-Morally-Ambiguous-Things-Sometimes.”

He shrugged, “I can accept that.”

“Especially since it’s true,” Pepper retorted as she gracefully laid herself across the couch. Ferro settled in between her parents, and handed them their chosen drinks. 

Loki had laid back against his fairy cat in time for his wife to show back up. “I have brought the popcorn!” she announced in her own distinctive Asgardian bellow. She plopped down beside her husband and gave him a peck on the cheek. Loki gave her a warm look, but turned a mischevious one on Darcy. “And pray tell what would you call me, dear Darcy? Am I not studly too?”

“You are solidly Studly Do-Wrong, Loki. But we like Sigyn so we keep you around.”

“Ew, Mama, you’re married!” Grant said. He was getting a bit creeped by the fact that his mother apparently admired the rest of the Avenger men way more than he originally thought. 

“Married does not mean blind or dead,” Darcy quipped. 

“So, why are we on this subject anyway?” Pepper asked.

“Because Bucky objected to me letting Grant try my Mike’s,” Darcy answered. 

“For shame!” Tony cried out in mock anger.

Pepper cocked an eyebrow. “Says the man who slips his six year-old sips of fifteen year old scotch.”

A chuckle went around the group as the last members of their party settled in. “So,” Darcy asked, “Where were we?”

“You and Dad were paling around D.C.,” Rebecca answered.

“Oh, yeah, we were!” She sat in her wicker chair next to Bucky. “You mind if I tell this part?”

“Go ahead.”

“First, kids, do you want to know every tiny little detail, or do you want to focus on just the romance?”

“Romance!” the answer came not just from the kids, but the adults as well. 

Darcy laughed. “Okay, okay, well, the thing is, the first part isn’t so happy. In fact, we came really close to, well, breaking up I guess, but then . . .”


	2. Beast and Beauty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Going on the run was harder than Darcy first thought.

_Look into my eyes, you will see, what you mean to me . . ._

Darcy had known intellectually that going on the run with Bucky Bear was going to be hard. They had to always be careful about going out in public, and even though she was able to get them fifteen different identities - thank you SHIELD and being able to swipe them from one of the safe houses she’d been told about- they had to be careful not to be recognized. SHIELD’s safe house had also yielded almost $100,000 in cash. They needn’t worry about money for a long time, but when you had a couple different international organizations looking for you, money didn’t much matter. 

Darcy had thought about dying her hair, but Bucky Bear had strenuously objected. He liked her dark-haired and light-eyed, and even though she wasn’t sure they were romantic yet, she derived some joy from him petting her long hair. He had also offered to dye or cut his hair, but she’d also objected. She liked petting his hair, and it was one of the things that helped calm him down after a nightmare.

Oh, did she mention the nightmares?

Every night, she woke to Bucky Bear’s moaning and writhing. The first time she’d thought about trying to wake him, and then thought better when she remembered who the hell he was. He wouldn’t mean to, but her Abnormal Psych course in college had covered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Instead, she reached out and ran her fingers through his hair, hoping that if she at least made him feel like he wasn’t alone, he wouldn’t freak out. Thankfully, he soothed beneath her ministrations, and she began to sing to him. 

“ _Tommy used to work on the docks . . ._ ” she sang softly. That first day in Washington she’d pulled out her iPod, and let him listen to some music. Quickly, she found that he preferred 80s hair metal to 90s punk and grunge, and had even seemed to like some of the alt rock from the early 2000s. “ _The Union went on strike, he’s down on his luck, it’s tough._ ”

Between her singing and petting, he settled back into slumber. When she’d tried to ask him about it in the morning, he’d refused to talk about it. She let him be, knowing that he would talk in his own good time. 

However, as they made plans to escape Washington, escape the US, his symptoms grew worse. The one time they’d splurged for a more expensive room out in Arlington, he’d had a panic attack sitting in the office chair provided in the room. It felt too much like the Chair when it leaned back, and Darcy had tried to talk him down but he wouldn’t listen. At a loss, she took a shot in the dark and began to sing. “ _If you ever find yourself stuck in the middle of the sea . . ._ ”

She sang through the song, and at the end, Bucky Bear had finally calmed down. She was able to get him up from the chair, and laid down on the bed with him. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. 

“It’s okay, Bucky Bear, we’ve just found one of your triggers.”

From then on, she saw him wilt. Instead of walking with his shoulders back and his spine straight, he began to hunch. He became meek, afraid of his own strength. She’d tried to discuss it with him, but he had clammed up. So instead they went back to planning where to go. “I’ve been to England, and I kinda don’t want to go back.”

He smiled a bit. “For some reason I have the same feelings about it.” They shared a look, acknowledging that a wisp of prior memory was coming through. “So that’s England out.” Darcy smiled a bit. “I’ve always wanted to visit France, but then again every girl wants to visit France.”

“France is okay.”

She gave him a small grin. “Okay. France is looking good, but I don’t speak the language.”

Bucky Bear rattled off something in what Darcy assumed was flawless French. She couldn’t help but feel a little turned on. In English he said, “I can teach you.”

Her smile was brilliant. “Okay, France it is.”

Amazingly, they were able to get on a plane and fly to France between Darcy’s abilities to create false IDs, and Bucky Bear’s newfound ability to look completely harmless, they’d gotten through security without a hitch. She even had documents ready to explain why he couldn’t walk through metal detectors. No one was going to harass a veteran who had rods in his left arm from a nearly life-ending injury in Iraq. Or question gloves covering horrible burns from the IED that exploded beneath his Humvee. 

The only problem was the seating. “Are you sure you can do this?” she asked him softly.

His breathing was fast and shallow, his pupils blown wide. Sweat sheened over his skin, and his hands shook. A flight attendant noticed and asked, “Is he alright?”

Darcy glanced up and gave her a wide smile. “Yes. He got injured in Iraq and, well, hates flying because of it.”

The young woman nodded. “My fiancée fought in Afghanistan. I understand. He, um, he says it helps to be distracted from whatever is bothering you. Or at least, that's what works for him.”

Darcy snapped her fingers and said, “That is a great idea.” She pulled out her iPod. “Here,” she said to Bucky Bear, “Put these in. Let’s listen to some music. Whatcha feelin’ like? Some Linkin Park or would you rather listen to Bruno Mars? I’ve got some Lindsey Stirling on here too.”

“Bruno Mars,” he answered gruffly. 

Darcy keyed up _Doo-whop and Hooligans_.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Music and Darcy were about the only things that kept him stable. He was a mess, and he knew it. Nightmares ate at his sleep and the most seemingly innocuous things could set him off. Office chairs, certain names, hell, even just being cold. Any reminder of his captivity was enough to set his delicate nerves into a nose dive. He was trying to remember, but details about who he had been so long ago did not come back up from the deepest crevices of his mind easily. Instead, the most recent memories did. Murders, assassinations, brutal abuse – all that he was remembering. It all fed the feeling that he was useless. All he was was a murderer. He didn’t want to say that to Darcy because if she finally realized the depths of her mistake in him, would she leave?

He couldn’t let her go.

They’d watched a Disney movie recently, _Beauty and the Beast_ , and he’d found himself sympathizing with the Beast. When the hunter had come for him during the climax, it had struck a chord. Darcy had told him that in the original tale, the Beast actually was in danger of wasting away of a broken heart because the Beauty had not returned from a visit. He sympathized with both incarnations. She was his Beauty, the only thing in his memory that wasn’t tainted in blood and death. Yes, he’d fought at the Triskelion, but he’d . . . he’d saved lives.

When the true depths of Pierce’s plan had been revealed, he remembered feeling light headed. “See,” she had said quietly, “I would have died anyway. Pierce and Fury talked about it. _Twenty million people_ , Bucky Bear, they were going to kill twenty million people.”

And he – _he, the monster, the bogeyman who killed with no mercy or remorse_ – had helped save the world. 

That did nothing to assuage his guilt and depression. Maybe in some books twenty million would make up for the blood on his hands, but that meant nothing to him. He hadn’t done it to save lives like Captain America or the man he now knew as the Falcon. He did it because of her. He’d do anything for her.

As they took off, he flipped through Darcy’s iPod, stopping on a song that he hadn’t heard her play before. He played it, listening intently. When the lyrics began it was like a punch in the gut. Here were his feelings for Darcy laid out in song. He’d heard other romantic songs, but this one with this melancholy, plaintative wail and gentle rock beat struck him as no other had. He knew that it was madness – _he was a broken mirror, jagged edges threatening to burst through his skin at any moment, she was a bright star in a flawless night sky_ – but he knew that he loved her. He had defied everything for her, destroyed lives and institutions for her, and he would as the song said, do anything for her. 

He hid his discovery from her by making sure to listen to the entire album – he did find that he enjoyed Bryan Adams well enough – and it was only when she was sleeping that he replayed the song over and over for hours while watching her sleeping face. He made a vow that if she ever grew tired of the running, ever wanted to go back to her old life, he would let her go just like the Beast in the story. 

But, God help anyone who tried to take her from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Schmoopy Bucky is schmoopy.
> 
> Lyrics taken from "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi and "Count on Me" by Bruno Mars.


	3. Logic and Reason and a Little Trolling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, hello there Jane.

_Search your heart, search your soul . . ._

The first week in France found them wandering the city like nomads. Nothing about the city seemed to resonate with Bucky, but Darcy enjoyed wandering with him. Slowly, oh so slowly, she learned the language. They would return each night to their small hotel room, and share a bed even if they didn’t share their bodies. In fact, even though both of them were attracted to the other, they hadn’t shared anything more than a kiss since the first night of nightmares. Bucky Bear had withdrawn ever further to the point that Darcy had to initiate all intimacy. He barely spoke, and never shared with her what haunted his nightmares. 

In return, Darcy found herself beginning to lose her patience and ability to meet each aborted conversation with a sunny quip. Soon, even her smiles started to become few and far between. Silences stretched for hours between them as they wandered the crowded streets beneath wrought iron and marble, through carefully manicured shrubbery and over the quiet waters. Soon, after a month in Paris, the only sounds they made to each other were in the darkest of nights as nightmares racked Bucky’s sleep and spurred Darcy to sing to him. Songs of hope, songs of love, songs of faith soon turned to songs of mourning, songs of despair, songs of love lost. 

_What an idiot she’d been._

Naively, so naively, Darcy had thought that she could heal him, help him all on her own Now faced with the enormity of his trauma, she fully understood how childish she’d been. He’d so completely withdrawn by the end of the month that she had to all but force him to eat. This couldn’t go on, and she had no way to help him. He’d saved her life two months before, but she couldn’t even return the favor. 

That is, until there was a frantic knock at their hotel room door. Bucky Bear had gone out for some supplies while she folded their freshly laundered clothes. Cautiously, she opened the door to their room. Without preamble, a warm, human shape slammed into her, and she shrieked in terror. Without thinking she swung a fist, connecting with the side of her assailant’s head. The feminine shriek of rage startled Darcy.

“Darcy?! _The hell are you doing!_ ”

“ . . . Jane?”

Dr. Jane Foster, world’s foremost expert on Einstein-Rosen Bridges and all other sorts of celestial phenomena was currently rubbing her head, glaring daggers at her former intern and friend. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “Sorry for scaring you, but, um, I well, me and Thor-“

Darcy sighed. Hard. With emphasis. With a little anger. She wasn’t in a good place, and here comes Jane, with boy problems. “Didja break up or something?”  
Jane nodded, still a bit teary eyed. “Yes.”

The sound of a clearing throat had both of them looking up. Bucky Bear stood in the doorway, looking a little confused. “Dammit,” Darcy muttered, dragging herself and her friend up. “Bucky Bear, this is my friend Jane. Jane, Bucky Bear.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jane had been having her own shit week. Well, shit month really. She and Thor had been on the outs for awhile, and now here she was sitting in a sunny little café in Paris with her best friend (maybe former best friend if Darcy’s expression was any indication) and her weird boyfriend. Jane couldn’t help but notice that Bucky Bear – _the hell kind of name was that?_ – was remarkably timid and retiring for a guy who looked like he could take Thor in a fight. She supposed that this wasn’t really the best time to bother Darcy with the consequences of her impulsive actions, but when she’d spoke to Heimdall about getting the hell out of Asgard, he’d said that this was the best place for her to go. 

Granted, the way he’d said it had been strange. Heimdall was a strange man on a good day, enigmatic and prone to semantic play, but he’d been strangely earnest about her coming here. She’d even mentioned going back to Eric Selvig since she was sure that Darcy would want nothing to do with her, but Heimdall had given her a small smile and said, “You are a good woman, Jane Foster, and your friend needs you. Her companion needs you.”

All of that had seemed suitably grand and mysterious when delivered in Heimdall’s booming voice, but now in the light of day it seemed misguided. However, she remembered something Thor told her once – _if all else fails, trust Heimdall._

“So,” she began, trying her best not to sound awkward and failing horribly, “how have you been Darcy?”

All she got was a glare. She decided to switch targets. “Um, Bucky Bear, what do you do?”

There was no response. 

Darcy snorted, “Don’t even try. He won’t talk to you. He won’t talk to anyone anymore.”

Jane was looking right at Bucky Bear and saw the hurt look that crossed his face. “Well, not if you’re so rude,” Jane tried lightly.

Yeah, that was the wrong thing to say.

Darcy seemed to expand. Her jaw clenched, her brows drew down into a vicious expression, and her lips curled back from her teeth. “I don’t think I need to be particularly nice in this instant, Jane. I gave up my entire life to try and help this jerk who won’t even talk to me anymore, and had the pleasure of having my best friend drop on my doorstep to hash out her boy problems and how she fucked up her life! Right now, I don’t care. I. Am. Done. With. You.”

Darcy stood up roughly, nearly upsetting their small wrought iron table. “I am done with both of you. I keep giving up my life, my dreams, for jerks who take what I give them and shit all over it. I gave up a job at the Senate to follow you to London, Jane, gave up all the connections I’d made with Senator Benson to continue being your unpaid fuckin’ intern only for you to decide to go running off after your boyfriend without any thought to me and Eric. Do you know what it was like to try to herd him on a plane and then back home? And now I’ve given up everything for you Bucky Bear, and you decide to treat me like I’m just your nursemaid to follow you all over hell and back. Well, fuck that!”

With that tirade delivered, Darcy stomped away, her spine ramrod straight and her entire body screaming murder. Jane and Bucky Bear watched her go, and Jane turned to look at the man sitting across from her. He had a resigned look on his face, and she couldn’t help but wonder about him. “That went well.” 

He grunted, and then sighed. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

Jane took a deep breath, and tried not to panic. She hadn’t wanted to get into an argument with Darcy, but now she had to know what the hell was going on between her friend and this guy. “Ok, quit with the angsty dumpster trash prince act for a minute and tell me what the hell is going on between you and Darcy.”

His eyes shifted back and forth. “Not here.”

She followed him back to the room after they paid for their food. She took the one chair in the room while he sat on the edge of the bed, his elbows resting on his knees. “So, what’s going on?” Jane asked. 

Later, she’d wished she hadn’t. Not only had her intern-cum-friend gotten caught up in a plot to take over the world, she’d decided to run away with one of the _most deadly assassins in history_. Granted, Jane would be the first to admit that the Winter Soldier no long looked like a Winter Soldier, he looked like a, well, a Bucky Bear. He seemed incapable of sitting up straight or with his head up. His eyes were always on the ground, and he touched everything as if it were made of glass. “She’s mad because . . . because I haven’t been speaking a lot lately,” he finished.

Now, Jane’s knee-jerk reaction was to berate him for stringing along her friend, but after her own shit month, she thought she knew a part of the problem. “Do you have nightmares?”

His eyes flew up to hers. His were wide, but hers were calm. “Yes. How did you know?”

She smiled a little. “Part of the reason Thor and I . . . ended it was because I wouldn’t talk to him about my nightmares. Well, it wasn’t really I wouldn’t talk to him, it was that he didn’t want to listen. Apparently Asgardians don’t suffer PTSD.”

He furrowed his brows. “What’s that?”

She cocked her head. “You’ve never heard of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?”

He shook his head. He’d mentioned that he suffered from abuse, and Jane needed to know more. “You said they abused you and forced you to follow, uh, programming? What was that?”

His eyes slid from her. “I wasn’t allowed to form relationships with anyone. I was to complete my mission, and return to base. No deviations. Interactions were to be kept to a minimum.”

“For how long?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he answered with a shrug. “They . . . they would wipe my memory when I was done with a mission. It’s only been in the last couple months that I’ve started to remember. And I . . .”

Jane began to get the picture. “You see them at night. The things you don’t want to see.”

“How did you know?” he asked brokenly.

Her heart squeezed. “I, well, I was the vessel for something called the Aether. It had the power to destroy, well, everything. And it was sentient. It wanted to remake things. Make and destroy, make and destroy. It didn’t care that I didn’t want to. It showed me what it would look like to destroy whatever I was looking at. That’s what I see at night. The world being made and destroyed over and over and there’s nothing I can do.”

“I see my kills,” he finally said baldly, his voice cracking. “I see them, and I can hear my thoughts. But they’re not mine, they’re the Winter Soldier’s, the uh, the thoughts I was thinking at the time, but I’m there too, and I’m screaming because –“

And that’s when the dam burst and Bucky finally unloaded everything that had been bothering him for two months. His memories, his pain, his regret, all of it flowing out of him like pus from a lanced boil. The infection of his horrid memories burst forth in a torrent of death and blood and violence, but he couldn’t stop. He told Jane about the assassinations where he’d shot people in the head from afar ( _Holy shit, he’d shot JFK_!), where he’d heard their screams of terror before he’d killed them, where he’d used his metal arm to strangle, pummel, cut them. He told her about his terror every time they froze him ( _So that’s how he’s been around for so long!_ ) and the pain of the memory wipes they used to keep him docile. 

He told her about how Darcy had saved him, about how she was the most beautiful, pure thing in his life, and he couldn’t tell her any of this. He didn’t want her sullied by the blood on his hands. That’s why he didn’t even touch her anymore. When he’d not remembered, the Winter Soldier had no qualms with touching her, wanting her, but now he did remember, and Bucky Bear couldn’t do that to her. Jane listened, and understood. She understood why Bucky withdrew, but she also understood what Darcy had seen in the assassin. He was a good man.

“Darcy said I was a hero when I helped Captain America stop HYDRA at the Triskelion,” he finished, “But I’m not. I did that for her, not for anyone else.”

Jane gave him a smile. “Okay, I just wanna look back at a couple of things you said logically.” She held out her hands. “On one side, you have the assassinations. You know, you didn’t consent to those actions, so really that wasn’t you.”

“I did them.”

She nodded. “Okay, so that one side are those assassinations. Doesn’t matter that you didn’t consent, you did them, right? You did it, no matter why or for what reason, right?”

He nodded. “So on the other hand,” she said, “We have your actions at the Triskelion. You helped Captain America save millions of lives, and you know, the world. But you state that you didn’t do that because that wasn’t your intent.”

He nodded again, his face beginning to twist into a frown. “That logic doesn’t flow. You can’t be responsible in one instance and not responsible in the other. Either you don’t bear responsibility for all those people because you – not your HYDRA puppeteers, you - had no intent to kill those people, and didn’t save the world because of continuing to have no intent to do so, or you do bear responsibility for killing those people and did save the world because you physically performed that action as well. You’re proposing that you were responsible for one thing because you physically performed the actions even though you had no intent to do so, while arguing that you did not do something else because you didn’t intend to do it, even though you physically did. No dice Soldier boy.”

Bucky’s jaw was somewhere in the vicinity of his ankles, but he did compose himself enough to begin to argue. “But –“

She shook her finger in his face. “No buts! You can’t have it both ways. My logic problem aside, I know this might be hard to accept, but you really were _not responsible_ for the deaths of those people while you were being used as a mindless puppet. But you are responsible for saving the lives of millions of people because even though you were doing it for Darcy, you still chose to do it yourself. The Winter Soldier. Bucky Bear. You.” 

His breathing turned ragged, and Jane could see the sheen in his eyes. “I’m dangerous,” he murmured.

“And so is my ex,” Jane replied. “Thor is a weapon of mass destruction. Doesn’t mean I couldn’t love him. Plus, Darcy chose to come with you. You haven’t protected her from your darkness, you’ve only hurt her with it.”

Tears began to fall as he curled back into himself. Jane decided that there had been enough talking, and rose to give him a hug, but someone beat her to the punch. Jane hadn’t realized it, but someone had been standing in the doorway the entire time. Darcy pulled him into a hug while she stood between his knees. His head was pillowed on her generous breasts. “Jane’s right, Bucky Bear. I knew that you’d done bad things in the past. I knew they were going to haunt you, but I couldn’t help you if you wouldn’t tell me.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Darcy nudged his head up until he was looking up at her. Jane felt tears come to her own eyes at the scene. There was love there, whether either one of them realized it or not, love in the way they held each other and looked at each other. “I’ll just leave you guys to have some time to talk. Be back in an hour.”

Jane escaped the room just as the two kissed. She trotted back down to the café next door to the hotel, and ordered another coffee. She sat in the sunshine, and smiled up at the sky. She hoped Heimdall could see her right now as she saluted him with her cup. Her heart was broken still – she’d loved Thor, but that love had no future. However, she was glad to be here and to help a love that had a future. Hopefully a rich and long one. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Far away, on the deck of the Rainbow Bridge, Heimdall smiled and nodded to the woman sitting on the café patio. Then he glanced over just a little, to the man he knew would soon mend her broken heart. Odin stood beside him, cloaked from sight. “So, I take it she has accomplished it?”

“Yes, Allfather, she has.” Heimdall glanced over. “But I wonder what interest you take in this story?”

“I like her,” Odin proclaimed, “though she is not a good match for my son, she has a warrior’s heart. Her and her shield sister. I see the possibility of her happiness down this road, and so I hope she continues to walk it.”

“Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match,” Heimdall pronounced in his stately tones. 

Odin was tempted to ask, but ultimately did not. Heimdall was glad, since it would be difficult to explain to one’s king one’s fondness for human musicals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Closet Theater Nerd!Heimdall is now my new favorite thing. Because come on - Shakespeare.
> 
> And thank you for all the love! I'm glad y'all are enjoying this little romp!


	4. Halcyon Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is happy.

_There’s no where unless you’re there . . ._

They decided to move on from Paris to Geneva. Jane would come with them, and claim to be Bucky’s sister if anyone asked. Darcy grinned at that, because Jane had all but adopted him. She’d asked Jane once if she was itching to go back to her science, but Jane had shaken her head. “No,” she said, “I think a vacation with you two is what’s on the plate right now. And anyway, it’s better cover right? Everyone will be looking for one guy and girl, not one guy and two girls.”

She did give them plenty of space however. She insisted on making a jaunt into London to pull her own savings out to help pay for expenses (even though they still had somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 left to live on) and to have her own room in the hotel. In the week between her arrival and the train ride to Geneva, she’d insisted on them going out by themselves each night. 

Ever since their talk, Bucky Bear had seen a vast improvement. He still had nightmares, but after his conversation with Jane, he was more willing to talk about them. Sometimes he still didn’t talk to Darcy, but he always spoke with Jane. Darcy found that she could accept this because the trade off was that Bucky actually interacted with her again. He also began to carry himself like the Winter Soldier again, but Darcy was okay with that. She found it sexy, especially when they went out and his upright posture allowed her to fit into his side as they walked. He was almost unbearably gentle with her, including when they kissed. She had inquired about going further, but Bucky had shaken his head. He was still afraid to lose control, and Darcy didn’t push. She would like to say it was because of noble intentions, but in reality it was because of one time during a rather torrid make out session that was turning into something else Bucky Bear nearly broke her shoulder. 

He’d been near to reverting back to his pre-Jane’s-talk days when Jane had pointed out the next morning (after Darcy had spilled to her what had happened) that Thor had broken her arm during the one time they’d had sex. Darcy and Bucky had blinked at that, and Jane shrugged. “Just don’t let it get to you. You just have to control yourself.”

So yeah, neither one really pushed it. 

Instead, they enjoyed the city. Bucky was ever vigilant for tails and what-not, but he figured HYDRA was still reeling from the incident in Washington. He never spotted a tail, but he did make sure to pay attention to Darcy. Ever since he’d started to reemerge from his shell she’d become her old, vivacious self. They went out to dinner together every night. His favorite had been the night they’d found a little place that had been open since before the second World War. It was a cozy little place, all dark wood and masculine acutrements. Darcy didn’t seem to mind though. She told him stories of her childhood, playing with the neighborhood kids and raising hell with a distant cousin. They’d sat together long into the night, and Bucky hated that they had to leave. 

The one time Bucky had insisted on taking Jane out with them, it had gone an interesting direction. They decided to go to the Louvre before they went to dinner, and Darcy couldn’t help the huge smile she had on her face. Bucky was also grinning, and Jane looked happy too. He’d insisted on escorting them with each woman on each arm, and the girls tried not to giggle at how jaunty they must have looked. Bucky had lost much of his ‘angsty dumpster trash prince’ look after Jane’s come-to-Jesus meeting with him, so he looked dapper as all hell in a black long-sleeve henley, black leather gloves, and jeans. Jane was rocking an elegant little pastel sun dress, and Darcy wore her favorite vintage purple dress that had survived the ravages of the Triskelion incident. 

At one point in the museum, as the girls stood slightly in front of him, Bucky groaned and put a hand to his head. His breathing sped up, and both women turned with looks of concern. “Bucky?” Jane asked.

“You okay?” Darcy whispered.

He took two deep breaths, and Jane looked up to the guard that came over at the first sign of his distress. Jane had turned out to be fluent in French too – Darcy was so jealous – and told the guard that her brother was just having a bit of a headache today. Once the man had left, Bucky spoke. “I remember doing this before.”

“You’ve been to the Louvre?” Jane asked.

“No, going out with two girls. We went . . . we went to . . . Stark?” He shuddered, and tears sprung to his eyes. “I killed him. I killed Howard Stark, oh god, I killed him, and I took those girls to see him –“

“Calm down,” Darcy said, “Breathe. I think you’re getting two memories mixed up. We know you assassinated Howard Stark. Now, do you remember when you saw him?” Jane began to hum in quietly.

Bucky shook his head, and bit his lip. “It was at a Stark Expo though.”

Jane made a moue with her lips. “The last Stark Expo was around the time I met Thor.”

“Then it would have to be older than that.”

Jane squinted. “I remember seeing something about it being the first one since 1974. Did you go to that one?”

Bucky shook his head. “The girls were dressed . . . a lot like Darcy.”

The two women shared a bewildered look. In that moment, something occurred to Darcy. “Here, let’s go outside,” she said as they shuffled outside. “At the Triskelion, Captain America said something about you being Bucky Barnes. His Bucky. Captain America’s James Buchanan Barnes died in World War II. Stark held an Expo right about that time. You think . . .”

Jane cocked a brow. “That would make him almost a hundred years old.” Then, she turned thoughtful. “But if they used cryogenic freezing in between missions . . .”

“World War II . . . I don’t remember which war, but I was getting shipped off the next day,” Bucky said. “I remember the girls . . . and Stark . . . and we were going to go dancing . . .”

The girls shared another look. “Hey, let’s get to dinner,” Jane said, “If you remember anything else, you’ll remember. If not, you don’t.”

Dinner was at a more upscale restaurant than they were used to eating at, but they had all agreed to splurge. Conversation still centered around what they’d learned. “So, you may actually be Captain America’s Bucky,” Darcy said softly. “That’s so cool.”

Bucky shrugged. “Hard to say. Right now I already feel like a couple different people. I’m Bucky Bear, and the Winter Soldier, and the guy I was back when I took girls out. I, um, I still don’t really know who I am.”

“Well,” Jane said adamantly, “Me and Darcy know who you are. You are sweet, and protective, and my shield brother and Darcy’s boyfriend. You’re our Bucky Bear. That’s all that matters in the long run. If we discover that you are actually Captain America’s friend too, he’s free to join us in the Bucky Bear fan club.”

Darcy got an impish look on her face. “So Jane, didn’t you tell me once about having a crush on Captain America in school?”

Jane rolled her eyes. “I was twelve, Darcy.”

However, Bucky found himself curious. “You had a crush on him?”

The woman sighed. “I, uh, was really awkward in school. I was ten times smarter than everyone around me, and they knew it. Even my friends could be kind of cruel about it. And boys? I scared the crap out of them. So, one day in 6th grade history we get to World War II, and there’s a picture of him. Captain America. And my teacher just gushes about him, how brave he was, and strong, and how he had been this skinny inner city kid with a big heart. She even waxed poetic about his rumored romance with Agent Peggy Carter. So, to my poor twelve year-old self, he was the perfect man. Everything I wanted in a boyfriend.”

“So thus, her type was born,” Darcy said grandly.

“Her type?” he asked.

“Tall, blond, and built,” Darcy answered. “Every boyfriend that lasted more than two dates has looked like that.”

Jane blushed, but didn’t deny it. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Bucky excused himself to go to the restroom, Darcy and Jane shared a look. “He’s totally James Buchanan Barnes,” Darcy said.

“Yep,” Jane said, with emphasis on the “p.” She shook her head. “Totally.”

“I know you have an encyclopedic knowledge of Captain America, but do you remember a lot about Bucky?”

“He should start to remember that he’s from Brooklyn, his best friend’s name is Steve Rogers, he was assigned to the 107th, and was born in 1917.”

Darcy nodded, her lips turning down in a “not-bad” frown. “Okay. How we going to handle it when he remembers that he’s a Howling Commando?”

“Same as we do everything else,” Jane replied, “with a song to calm him down, a few hugs, and hope.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bucky found himself feeling contentment and happiness for the first time in his memory. He still sometimes had the feeling like he was about to burst out of his skin, and his nightmares still haunted him at night, but now two voices would sing lyrics under their breath if he began to panic in public. It had started happening again, even though the panic attacks weren’t caused by his usual triggers – loud pops, office chairs, sudden cold, or static shocks – they were caused by memories popping back into his head. There were innocuous for the most part, but the panic came because for a moment he was reintroduced to facets of his life that he didn’t know previously. He remembered he had a sister, Rebecca and two other siblings he couldn't remember. His mother had taken in laundry and his father had worked in a little shop up the street from their apartment. He had a friend – whose name he still couldn’t recall, no matter how much he tried – and he’d gone to war. 

He also remembered being quite the lady’s man, which Jane and Darcy had giggled about. 

The train ride to Geneva had been stressful for him. He’d nearly gone into a full on panic attack several times, but Jane and Darcy had quickly turned their cabin into the Party Car. The entire trip to Geneva was spent in song as they queued up songs on Darcy’s iPod to listen to. They tried not to bother their neighbors, but an overzealous rendition of Guns’n’Roses’s “Welcome to the Jungle” ended up with them being chastised by a conductor. Bucky enjoyed it, able to relax a little with both women trying their level best to help him. 

Darcy’s eyes sparkled as she pulled up another song. “Hey, Jane, you know this one?”

Jane bent her head over Darcy’s iPod, and Bucky admired the picture they made. They were a study in opposites. Where Darcy was dark and curvy, Jane was light and slender. Her hair was still brunette, but her hair was a golden brown as opposed to Darcy’s dark-chocolate colored hair. Jane also had the tendency to be a bit more reserved than Darcy, though both of them could be smart asses. He still grinned at Jane calling him ‘angsty dumpster trash prince.’ He also loved them both but in different ways – Jane was like his long lost Rebecca, sweet and whip smart, able to talk to him on an almost even playing field when it came to their trauma. He suspected that Jane’s nightmares were just as bad as his, but she’d had longer to cope with them. Darcy was still the Beauty to his Beast.

When they finally arrived, he settled them into their hotel, and decided that he wanted to surprise them. “I’ll be right back,” he said as the girls were spreading out their clothes to be hung up. They had managed to find a hotel with a suite with two bed rooms for relatively cheap, and had jumped at the opportunity. 

“Want us to come?” Jane asked.

“Nah,” he said with a grin. “I’ll be okay.”

Darcy stepped up and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Be careful, Bucky Bear.”

“I will,” he breathed. She smiled and nodded, and he left. He stopped by the front desk, and asked where the nearest florist and chocolatier was, then set out. In his week of living with Jane he’d discovered her pathological weakness for good dark chocolate. He remembered it being a good idea to give a girl flowers, and nothing he’d seen had led him to think that had changed in the last however-many years since his days as a lady killer on the streets of – 

_Brooklyn_.

He hissed in pain as that bit of his past finally resurfaced. Jane and Darcy had discussed his possible origins and had narrowed it down to New York based on his accent. He thought they’d get a kick of out being right. It took him only a few minutes in each shop to procure what he needed – dark chocolates for Jane, milk chocolate truffles for Darcy at the chocolatier and red roses for Darcy at the florist – before he returned. The girls had finished their unpacking, and he found them in the sitting room laughing over something Darcy had said. They turned to him with smiles that turned into expressions of utter delight. “Bucky Bear!” Darcy squealed, “What is all this?”

“I figured you two deserved something nice for putting up with me on the train.” He handed the bouquet of roses to Darcy along with her chocolates. Jane had looked on with interest until he handed her the other box. 

“For me?!” she cried. Upon opening the box she squealed again, “Bucky!”

He accepted their thank you kisses – Jane’s on the cheek, Darcy’s full on the mouth – and sat down with them as they devoured his offerings to them. Granted, it was no hardship because they happily shared their loot with him. He found he preferred the dark chocolate to the truffles. “I remembered where I’m from. I’m from Brooklyn.”

The girls high-fived. “Knew it,” Darcy said.

“We are good,” Jane agreed. 

Looking at them as they enjoyed his gifts and each other’s company, Bucky decided that he’d like for this to go on forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pure fluff before the storm.
> 
> And again, many thanks for all the awesome comments and kudos!


	5. Allies and Enemies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miss Poop, meet Mr. Fan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains mentions of non-consensual medical procedures including a gynecological one. Nothing graphic, but it did happen off screen.

_Don’t tell me it’s not worth tryin’ for . . ._

“Darcy? Jane?”

They’d been in Geneva for over a week, and Bucky had just run to the drugstore to get some medicine for Jane. She had been having a horrible migraine, and he’d volunteered to go out to get her something for the pain. However, he’d hurried back because of a creeping unease. In the nearly two months they’d been in Europe – and then the month before it in the States – Bucky had never felt the hinky feeling that traveled up his spine when he’d realized that someone was watching him. He’d had it as soon as he’d exited the drugstore, and had made the man following him. The guy was completely nondescript, but Bucky was still the Winter Soldier. Skills for stealth and throwing tails told him that he’d fucked up. Somehow he’d been made. The girls were in danger!

And now here he was facing his worst fear. They were gone. He called them again, checking the bedrooms, but the suite was empty. He knelt beside his bed, pulled one of the knives he’d snuck through customs, and waited. Sure enough, his tail finally had the gumption to go for it. The man pounced on him, thinking that he had some sort of surprise on his side, but he went down easily. Instead of killing him, Bucky decided that he had some questions to ask. “Who took them?” he asked, the Winter Soldier coming back to the fore. Though, it should be recognized that the Winter Soldier had always been there, waiting for the time that Bucky would need him. 

“HYDRA. They have a message for you, Winter Soldier,” the man said with a strangled chuckle. “Come back to the fold, or your women will die.”

The Winter Soldier froze, the façade falling away to reveal Bucky again. “No.”

The man said nothing more, the cyanide cap he’d already swallowed long since having taken his life.

Bucky sat there for God knows how long, his mind nothing but white noise. HYDRA. They had Jane and Darcy. They had his sister and his lover. And they wanted him back. 

“Come now warrior! We don’t have all night!”

The booming voice caused Bucky to throw his knife right at it. He took a few harsh breaths as he examined the woman who had caught his knife. _An inch before it hit her face_. The stranger was a young woman with skin the color of dark wood. Her hair was long, so long that it brushed the backs of her knees, and gathered into a multitude of braids that almost seemed to form their own chucky strands. The strands near the front of her head were caught up to the back of her head so that they did not get into her face. She had a kind face, and eyes of clear amber. She was dressed casually in a flowing blouse and lacy skirt. She tossed Bucky his knife back, and it was a near miss for him to catch it in his shock. 

“Who are you?” Bucky asked.

“A friend. You may call me Sigyn. Come. I know where they’ve taken your women.” The woman gestured for Bucky to follow, but Bucky stood his ground. 

“Why should I trust you?” he asked.

Sigyn nodded. “Skepticism does you well, but not here. I am here to help you because I have a wish to. I . . .” She sighed. “I love someone who will never be within my reach, but your Darcy is within yours.”

Something about the woman struck Bucky as earnest, so he stood and followed her out. “How do you know where they are?”

“I have companions with just the sets of skills we needed for this,” Sigyn answered. “Now come, we must hurry.”  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Darcy opened her eyes to a grey ceiling. She blinked a couple of times, swearing that she should be somewhere else right now. Where had she been? Oh yeah, her hotel in Geneva. Which most certainly did not have a grey ceiling covered in fluorescent lights. When she tried to sit up, something resisted, and she looked down at her arms. Straps held her down and she felt her blood begin to run cold. 

“Oh look! She’s awake Papa!” a feminine voice said with cheer.

“I see, my little one.” This masculine voice sounded much older, more weary. Darcy turned towards the sound of the voices to find a man in his fifties and a woman in her twenties looking on. The woman was playing with something in her hands. They approached Darcy, and the man’s white lab coat caused a new spark of fear to travel down her spine. “A pleasure to meet you, young lady. I am Dr. Keller. This is my daughter, Jemma,” the man said in a voice tinged with a British accent. 

Jemma tossed her blonde hair. “I don’t know why we have to keep her. Just let the Winter Soldier come to us, Papa. I can be the mother of the next generation just as well as she could.”

Darcy worked her mouth a couple of times, before finally croaking, “The fuck?”

“See! She doesn’t even know how to speak properly!” Jemma whined in a voice that was grating as all hell. 

“We will need more than one mother of the next generation, love. That’s why we’re keeping her and her friend.” Dr. Keller finally addressed Darcy. “How do you feel?”

“Like I was hit by a truck,” she admitted. “Who are you? What are you doing with me?”

Dr. Keller had a fatherly looking face, one that was probably quite handsome in his youth. However, she couldn’t help but think about Alexander Pierce in that moment. “You are here to help our organization reclaim a lost asset. They were going to kill you, but I reminded them that we needed more subjects for Project Eve. Which will be perfect – the Soldier will get to keep his toy, and we will have another Eve. Your friend was a bonus.”

Darcy looked to where Dr. Keller nodded, and saw Jane on the next table over. She was watching with eyes half-slit in pain, and the bruise forming on her forehead reminded Darcy of how they’d been taken. She swallowed thickly, fear and rage turning into a hurricane in her stomach. “You bastard.”

“Now, now, it will be an honor,” Dr. Keller said. “You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are the mothers of a new age. But first, we must make you ready for it.”

“How?” Darcy gritted, wanting to know what exactly their plan was. She already had a good guess at what Project Eve’s endgame was – no one could miss that reference – but she sensed that there was more to it than being a baby machine. 

Jemma smiled with false sweetness. The entire time she’d been playing with something in her hands, and finally held it up to Darcy’s face. “Look familiar?”

“Jemma, I thought I asked you to throw that away,” Dr. Keller said sharply. 

It took Darcy a moment to realize what the object was. It was an inter-uterine device and looked a lot like . . . _the one she’d had implanted two years ago_. Nausea bubbled through her guts. “You bastards. You fucking bastards.” 

“Come now, young lady,” Dr. Keller crooned, “we had to remove it. Not only will you not need it, but we also cannot have it inside your uterus during the procedures.”

“What procedures?” she all but screamed. 

“Why, before you can become the mother of the new breed, you must become the new breed,” Dr. Keller answered. “Commander Moreau has requested another attempt at a serum-scepter hybrid. I think you and your friend shall be excellent attempts.”

“But Papa!” Jemma all but screeched, “You said I was going to be the only hybrid!”

Keller shook his head, and Darcy saw something move behind his eyes. It was as if there was another person there, trying to break out. “Commander Moreau’s word is law, love.”

“We’ll see about that!” she said, stomping out of the lab. 

“She must have forgotten that Moreau is homosexual.” Dr. Keller shrugged and went back to prepping a tray at Darcy’s side. “Please promise to kill her when you have completed the procedure.”

“What?” she asked. 

Dr. Keller looked back into her eyes, and Darcy realized that the other person had come to the fore. “Jemma is a sociopath, to put it bluntly. She also gained the rather inconvenient ability to charm anyone who is attracted to her from the Scepter. She needs to be killed. I cannot do it because while her influence over me is not lasting, I can be affected while she’s in the room. She has also already killed all of the people that could have done it for me with the exception of Commander Moreau, and he won’t do it because she is required for Project Eve.”

Darcy stared at him with a gaping mouth, unable to answer. That is, until she felt the needle going into her arm. “Hey, what’re you –“

The burning was horrible. It swept over her like wildfire. “Let my notes reflect that stage one for both subjects has begun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked to know about Sigyn's romance with Loki, and I actually decided to change up the story a bit to incorporate her into the main story line. 
> 
> Again, many thanks for your kudos and comments!


	6. Apotheosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy and Jane's Bogus Journey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions of abuse and non-con/rape.

_Take me as I am, take my life, I would give it all, I would sacrifice . . ._

They burned and writhed and burned some more. Eternal pain, pain never ending swirled and eddied, and was only broken by almost unintelligible words. Neither woman could truly make out the words, and they didn’t really care. Their bones were melting, their muscles turning to ash, their brains boiling in their skulls. When it stopped, they were still screaming in their minds, screaming in pain and screaming in anger. 

_Bucky Bear, they’re going to make him into the Winter Soldier again!_

_They’re going to use us! Abuse us! Take our freedom! Take his freedom!_

Two female voices called into the void, and amazingly, the void called back. _What would you do with power and knowledge?_

Jane’s voice was a shriek. _Save Darcy. Save Bucky. Stop this madness. Build something amazing. Change the world._

Darcy’s voice was a wail. _Save Bucky. Save Jane. Stop the madness. Shock the shit out of that little bitch. Cuddle Bucky until we can’t cuddle anymore!_

The void did not laugh, it did not cringe, it did not feel emotion. _Why? Why save each other and this Bucky? Why stop these scientists? They only seek knowledge._

Darcy was righteous anger. _Because I will always fight for the ones I love! Because these guys are evil, and wrong, and need to be stopped!_

Jane was soft remorse. _Because Bucky and Darcy deserve to be happy. Because science should help people, not torture and hurt them._

The voice of the void was satisfied. _Then, here, take what you need._

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Darcy came back to consciousness with a gasp. She was again looking up at a grey ceiling, but she could tell that she was alone. Gingerly, she sat up. She was in a cell. The walls were white as was the tile, and there was a thick, glass wall to her right. Her cot was built into the wall, and there was a toilet in the corner with a privacy screen set up in front of it. “Well, at least that’s something,” she muttered.

“More than you deserve, but Commander Moreau was insistent. He’s not my biggest fan right now.”

Darcy looked back over at the woman standing on the other side of the glass. Her blonde hair was caught up in a professional looking bun, but Darcy was more distracted by the two men kneeling at her feet. Shirtless. There were cuts all over their upper torsos, some that actually looked like they needed stitches. A patchwork of bruises marred their bodies. The blond on the left looked like he was about to pass out. “The fuck?”

Jemma looked down at the two men and shrugged. “I was a little angry when I returned to my toys. It seems Moreau had a problem with me eliminating my father.”

“Well, yeah,” Darcy retorted. “Patricide is generally looked down upon.”

“By humans,” Jemma sneered. “I’m more than that. My father should have never told you to kill me.”

“Heard that did you?” Darcy stood on shaky legs. 

“Its alright,” the other woman said with a pat on one of her “toy’s” head, “I was planning on it anyway. As it is, I won’t be worrying about Moreau anymore either. He’s going to be out delivering the scepter to a colleague for further experimentation. I was able to convince him that you and your little friend were on the brink of death. I’m going to get my way after all.”

For a minute, Darcy was confused, until she remembered what Dr. Keller had said and Jemma’s initial reaction. “. . . You’re going to kill us, aren’t you?”

“How droll! The fat little bitch is right!”

Darcy stiffened. “Well, excuse me M’lady Stick Insect. I wasn’t aware that actually having mammary glands decreased intelligence. _I thought it was blond hair._ ”

Jemma hissed, and the two men on the ground threw themselves against the glass. Their faces might have been handsome, once upon a time, but now they were distorted by abuse and manufactured rage. “I’m going to have fun with you. I think I’ll let you live for right now. And when your precious Winter Soldier shows up, I’ll charm him into fucking me right against this glass, and then having him strangle you, slowly.”

Darcy lost it in a way she never had before. She was scared – shit yeah, she was scared, she was trapped in a cage and her warden was crazier than a bag of cats – but it was one thing to threaten her. Fear for herself, she could deal with. But this chick had just threatened her Bucky. Just threatened to take away his autonomy, his will, his freedom. Just threatened to make him do the most abhorrent things he could possibly conceive while he was trapped by Jemma's mind control.

_Oh. Hell. No._

A tingling began in the center of her chest, and it traveled down her arms as she stalked towards the glass. She could see her faint reflection, and she looked like hell, _angry hell_. Hell that had frozen over and was ready to let Satan go ice skating. Hell that was about to rain down on this woman and her two puppets and every HYDRA jackwagon who had ever even thought to control her Bucky. She slammed her palms against the glass, and the tingling in her arms became an oscillating wave of power traveling across the glass. St. Elmo’s fire raced across the surface, blue and purple nitrous flickers skittering across the surface. Jemma’s eyes went wide as Lichtenburg figures began to branch out from Darcy’s palms across the glass. 

“You touch him,” Darcy growled, “and I will tase the shit out of you. I tased the head of SHIELD, I tased the head of HYDRA, and I fuckin’ tased the _God of Thunder_. One little blonde bitch with an ego will be _nothing_.”

Jemma sneered. “We’ll see about that.”

“Yeah,” Darcy replied, “We’ll see you writhing on the ground.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BAMF!Darcy was totes one of the points of this entire AU. Not even gonna lie, turning her into a human Taser was one of my goals here.
> 
> Again, thank you for the kudos and comments! I appreciate them!


	7. Muninn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Winter Soldier and Sigyn to the rescue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mildly graphic violence.

_Yeah, I would fight for you, walk the wire for you . . ._

The Winter Soldier stared down at the compound with ill concealed hate. A concrete building that looked like it was built in the years after the second World War rose from the ground with cold purpose. Several acres of the woods had been cleared away around the building, and chain link fence marked the boundary of forest and compound. At each corner a concrete bunker protected the inner yard which also teemed with men and machines. A fleet of vehicles sat to one side of the compound, and they were a mix of civilian models and military hardware. The building was lit, halogen lamps illuminated the yard.

Sigyn stood to his right, and the two surveyed what they were up against. “They are heavily guarded,” she murmured. 

The Winter Soldier nodded. His voice was cold. “We must find the girls.”

“Yes,” Sigyn agreed. “However, it would be wise to wait for my companions.”

“Who are they?” the Soldier scanned the trees, trying to spot any snipers who might be guarding the perimeter.

“Friends,” Sigyn replied. At that moment, a low growl drifted to them. Both of them turned to find two wolves looking at them. She chuckled. “Speaking of the devils.”

The wolves trotted up to them, and one even nudged the Soldier’s right hand. He stroked its massive head, its fur coarse under the pads of his fingers. Its eyes were golden, and fixed on him. The other went to Sigyn, and sat at her feet. “How are they going to help us?” the Soldier asked, still stroking the wolf’s head.

“Freki will guide you to the women. Geri here will help Huginn, Muninn, and myself in keeping the guards busy while you fetch them. Let us go in first, and you and Freki follow once the guards are distracted.” Sigyn gestured to a tree, where two ravens sat. One of them flew down, and landed on the Soldier’s shoulder. “On second thought, it appears that Muninn wishes to accompany you.”

The Soldier examined his two new companions. Freki the wolf and Muninn the raven examined him in return. He had a couple of doubts about them, namely the fact that animals were supposed to help him get Darcy and Jane out. Before he could verbalize anything, Sigyn was gone. A strangled shout from below had the Soldier turning to the compound. The halogen lights revealed the answer to Bucky’s question. The wolf ravaged the guards, attacking viciously, and, was it bigger? It seemed bigger. The raven flew into one of the bunkers through the gun slit, and screams sounded from within. The door to the bunker flew open as a man tumbled out. His face was bloody, and it looked like the bird had taken one of his eyes. Sigyn herself was beating a swath of destruction through the guards with her sword, and the Soldier couldn’t help but admire the obvious skill the woman had in war. 

Freki gently pulled on the Soldier’s hand, and he realized that now was the time to strike. In the chaos caused by the woman, bird, and wolf, he could slip by with minimal trouble. When he did he found himself in a place out of his worst nightmares. The Winter Soldier slipped a bit, Bucky Bear coming to the fore as he faced a medical facility too much like the one he’d only just escaped. The halls were plain, white tile butting up against walls only a shade or two darker than the floor. The lights were harsh and unforgiving, reflecting off of the walls and tile with glare worse than snow. 

The wolf nudged him along, and Bucky allowed the Winter Soldier to come back to the fore. With a chuff, the wolf led him down the corridor, and then hung a left. Muninn stayed perched on his shoulder, only leaving it once to get the drop on a guard turning the corner. The Soldier watched dispassionately as the bird took the man’s eyes before the wolf took his life. All the Soldier took was the guy’s gun. They continued on, until they came to a stair well. Freki led the way down, and Bucky followed cautiously. Muninn had returned to perch, but this time took up residence on the top of the Soldier’s head. 

At the foot of the stairs, the room opened up into a large laboratory space. Medical equipment was pushed against the walls, and in the back were three large cells, two of which were occupied. Jane and Darcy were both banging on the glass, shaking their heads. The Soldier only had a split second to react before a woman stepped in front of him. “Hello, soldier,” she crooned. “Come to Jemma.”

His body stopped being his own body. The Soldier felt his legs answer her command, and the Soldier slipped away again. Bucky pushed as hard as he could against the force invading his mind, but he couldn’t budge it. He pushed again, and then panic began to take hold. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t do anything, _oh God, oh God, oh God_ – 

He felt the brush of feathers against his cheek, and words began to pour from his mouth. “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, serial number –“ 

The woman reared back in confusion, but the memories began to pour back in a torrent. Brooklyn. Raising hell and getting into fights to defend his skinny, sickly friend. The Stark Expo. Shipping out, leaving Steve behind. Being captured and experimented on by Zola. Steve rescuing him. The Howling Commandos. Steve’s face when he fell from the train. James Buchanan Barnes. He was Captain America’s Bucky. When the last memories fell into place, his mind became too chaotic for the woman to process, and she withdrew, her face a sneer of contempt. 

“Calm down, and come to me,” the woman said again, but Bucky didn’t listen. Instead he lashed out quickly, punching her in the side of the head. She went down hard, her blonde hair flying. “Get him!” she screeched.

Two men lunged out at him from where the woman had to have been standing a moment before, and Bucky found himself engaged with them. However, they weren’t normal foes. One of them managed to block a punch, and he could feel their strength. _They were super soldiers too_.

However, Freki and Muninn came to his rescue again. The two men became more preoccupied with the animals as Freki latched onto the arm of the brunet man, and Muninn began to dive bomb the blond. Bucky turned away, and ran for the cells. He nearly cried upon seeing Darcy and Jane’s relieved grins. He punched in the unlock sequence, and embraced the two women as soon as the doors slid open enough for them to squeeze out. Both of them looked only a little worse for wear, with bags under their eyes and strain in the set of their lips. “You fought her off!” Darcy exclaimed. “I was so worried!”

“You should be!” the woman screamed from across the lab. She held up a semiautomatic rifle, and Bucky felt his heart squeeze as he turned to protect the girls. However, what happened next shocked the hell out of him.

Almost literally.

Jane waved her hands, her eyes turning into two fields of stars. Metal particles flowed to her from a nearby gurney. The particles flowed and formed into a round shield that she held in front of them. The loud pops of the rifle firing were accompanied by louder pings of ricochets as the three of them huddled behind the shield. “Cover me!” Darcy cried.

It was only those instincts honed by seventy years of unwilling training that allowed him to smoothly raise his own weapon and fire a tight pattern as Darcy slammed her palms into the ground. Branching, crackling blue arcs of electricity traveled over the ground, and when it reached the woman and her two cronies, traveled over them. The three opponents screamed in agony and fell, but the electricity kept going. Right into a set of oxygen tanks that exploded. 

Again, the only thing saving them was seventy years of training and the fact that Jane had apparently gained the ability to make vibranium out of thin air. Bucky grabbed both women around the middle, rolling them all into one of the cells and using the wall, and the shield as cover. The explosion licked at what little they exposed, but the shield kept them from being crushed by the falling ceiling. After a few moments, Bucky peeked over the shield. The woman and the men were down. He pulled the girls up. “We have to go now.”

Darcy nodded, and Jane examined the shield. “I have no idea how I did that,” she said blankly. 

“Doesn’t matter right now,” Darcy replied, “We need to go before Crazy over their wakes up.”

Bucky pulled her into a fierce hug, and then turned and led them out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Freki, Geri, Huginn, and Muninn are companions of Odin, and in my head canon, Sigyn was Frigga's handmaiden, but after the events of Dark World got the job of looking after Odin's companion animals. 
> 
> Again, thank you for all the kudos and comments!


	8. After the Battle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new member of the club, and Darcy realizes something.

_Search your heart, search your soul, when you find me there you will search no more . . ._

The compound burned, and the three companions decided to steal one of the SUVs in the parking lot. As they pulled around, the headlights illuminated a figure standing in the darkness with two wolves and two birds. The woman looked up at them, her face spattered with blood. She raised her sword as Bucky stopped the truck and jumped out. “Sigyn?” he called.

Darcy and Jane shared a look. “Who’s that?” Darcy asked.

“She helped me save you,” Bucky replied. To the woman he said, “Are you alright?”

She nodded. “I am fine. Freki, Geri, Muninn, and Huginn are unhurt as well.” She looked to the sky, but Jane realized that she’d seen the woman somewhere before.

“Wait . . . Aren’t you . . . weren’t you Frigga’s handmaiden?” she asked, sliding from the car. “Sig . . . uh, Sigyn? Right?”

The woman bowed. “A pleasure to see you again Lady Jane. And yes, I am Sigyn.”

“Well, do you need a ride?” Jane pressed. “We can give you guys one. Or, well, I guess Heimdall will so that was a silly question.”

Sigyn opened her mouth, but then closed it as her eyes turned downcast. “I have been banished from Asgard. Odin allowed me to borrow these four, but . . . I have no home.”

Darcy and Jane looked to Bucky. He shrugged. “Then get in the car.”

Sigyn smiled and gave the two wolves one last pat. She approached the car just as the Bifrost opened behind her, whisking away the four animals. Sigyn crawled into the third row, while Jane laid down in the second row. As she lay in the back seat, she took a look at the shield she held in her hands. It was an exact replica of Captain America’s famous one, right down to the paint job. In the split second before that Jemma woman had begun to fire, she’d thought about that shield, and, she’d made it. 

Her mind began posing questions, but she decided to answer one and only one. Could she will it into another shape? It was a useful piece of equipment, but too big to be lugging around. She willed it to be smaller, something that could be worn and was mostly inconspicuous. She thought about Asgardian jewelry, and suddenly she saw the shield begin to shift and flow. She visualized a heavy braided torc with two eagle heads coming together in front of her neck, a shield with a single star between them. Heavy braided bracelets encircled her wrists, and higher up she formed plain armlets around her biceps. The pieces of jewelry were heavy and dense, compacting all the metal that had gone into them from the shield. 

“That’s a pretty cool power,” Darcy remarked from where she had turned back to look at Jane. 

“I know. I . . . I think I even turned the metal into vibranium.” Jane glanced up at her friend. “And your power is nothing to sneeze at.”

Darcy made a “not bad” frowny face, while nodding. “It is fitting that I became a human Taser.”

“What did they do to you?” Bucky asked softly.

Jane and Darcy shared a look. “Made us into human experiements, you know, HYDRA’s favorite thing in the world.” Darcy glanced back at him. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, but refused to take her non-answer. “What did they do to you Darcy?”

“Does it really matter? It’s not nearly what they did –“

“Quite your stalling, Darcy Elizabeth Lewis,” Jane said sternly. “It doesn’t matter what Bucky’s gone through, he’s asking about you. Trauma isn’t a contest or competition. Just because he’s gone through more doesn’t make his problems more important than yours.”

“Thank you, oh Voice of Reason,” Darcy snarked, but she sighed. “. . . The blonde bimbo who shot at us? She . . . she was going to enslave you. And . . . they changed us.”

Bucky scratched the side of his head with his metal arm. “Yeah, I, uh, noticed.”

“That woman was vile,” Sigyn said from the back.

“Did it burn and hurt like a son of a bitch when you were injected with super soldier serum?” Jane asked suddenly, as a thought occurred to her. “I mean, if you remember.”

“I remember,” he whispered. “I remember everything now. You guys were right. Captain America was right. I am James Buchanan Barnes.”

Darcy and Jane shared a look and a weary high five. “So, did it?”

“Yeah. Zola did it. Seems that they were still able to get a sample. Something about engineering it from some of the Red Skull’s blood.” He shuddered at that, and Jane couldn’t blame him. “It burned. Like the worst fire you could imagine. Like –“

“Like everything was melting?” Darcy put in.

“Like your brain was boiling in your skull?” Jane added.

“Yeah,” he answered. They were all silent for a moment. “But that doesn’t explain the alchemy and electricity.”

Jane wrinkled her nose. “We were both incoherent in pain at the time, so I don’t know what else they did to us, but the doctor mentioned a scepter.”

“Doctor? The woman?” he asked.

“No,” Darcy answered, “Her dad. Who she killed because he asked me to kill her.”

Bucky’s eyebrows went nearly to his hairline. “Damn.”

“Yeah, I know.” Darcy turned back to Jane. “Did you . . . did you, like, talk to someone when we were out?”

Jane nodded slowly. “You mean, the voice that told us it would . . .” She stopped, remembering something. “Wait, whatever it was, it gave us what we wanted.”

Darcy blinked and then nodded. “You wanted to make things. I wanted to tase the shit out of Jemma the Super Bitch.”

Bucky grinned, and Jane thought it looked good on him. Even after becoming a little bit of a happier person over the last few weeks, he rarely grinned. “So, you’re not only a human Taser, you’re a super soldier Taser.”

She laughed, and then her eyes went wide. “Oh my God! Do you know what this means?!”

Sigyn, Jane, and Bucky eyed her warily. “What?” he asked gingerly.

“We can totally have sex now!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Mama, really? You just escaped a HYDRA stronghold and your first thought was that you could finally do the deed with Dad?” 

“Hey, I had needs. Still do.”

“ . . . And to be honest that realization was the second best part of the night.”

“What was the best one?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, mythological Sign (who I am basing this version off of) has very little to her name other than her devotion to Loki, so future details about her are going to be completely my invention.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who commented and gave kudos!


	9. Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A duet.

_There’s no love like your love, and no other could give more love . . ._

Jane and Sigyn had dozed off not long after Darcy had proclaimed her realization to the heavens. She found she couldn’t be embarrassed about it. She sat curled up in the seat, with her back to the door. She watched Bucky drive, her heart glad. “You came for us,” she murmured.

He glanced over at her and nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“That you won’t be able to go back to your old life. We didn’t wipe the computers, so there’s a good chance that HYDRA will be hunting you now too.”

She chuckled. “Do you think I really want to?”

He was silent for a moment. “I made a promise to myself back in Washington that if you ever wanted to walk away, I’d let you. Like the Beast in the story.”

“But I don’t want to,” Darcy said. Then she wrinkled her nose. “Wait, are you talking about Beauty and the Beast?”

He nodded. “I found the situation kinda appropriate.”

She smiled a little. “I can’t say I blame ya. But the difference is, I’m not Belle. I chose to come with you.”

“Why?” he asked, though he knows the answer. “Because I’m a broken bird that you wanted to help heal?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “But that wasn’t the only reason. Even when you were still relearning how to be a human being, you were gentle, and brave, and you didn’t get offended by my obnoxious pop culture references.”

“Well, admittedly half of them went over my head,” he replied.

She waved a hand at him, gesturing for him to stop. “Sh-sh-sh! Doesn’t matter.” She chuckled. “And then you started being Bucky Bear more than the Winter Soldier, and added funny and sweet. Your worst flaw? Everything is your fault. Everything. I swear, sometimes I wondered if you would assume responsibility for the rain outside.”

“But now I’m also James Barnes,” he whispered. “And he’s kind of a sarcastic asshole. And a flirt.”

“So? We’ll add sarcastic asshole to the flaw list. I mean, I am impulsive and tase people for fun and profit. I can deal with sarcastic asshole.”

“And what does any of this have to do with you giving up everything for me? You admitted that in Paris – you gave up everything to be with me. I have exposed you to more danger than any sane person should have to deal with, dragged your emotions through the mud when I was so worried about what I wanted versus what you wanted, and now you were turned into a human Taser because of me! I’m still not even sure who I really am – the Winter Soldier, Bucky Bear, or James Barnes!”

“Makes the whole tasing for fun and profit thing a little easier,” she quipped. “And I did all that because I don’t really care who you think you are, because I know who you are. You are the man I keep falling in love with. I fell in love with the Winter Soldier when he took on an entire criminal organization that had abused and subjugated him for like, seventy years to rescue me. I fell in love with Bucky Bear when he admitted that he wanted to protect me from his darkness because I was the purest thing in his life. Now, you just make me fall in love with James Barnes’s sarcastic asshole tendencies. I mean, I adore Sherlock and House, so you won’t have to try very hard.”

Bucky’s face was frozen. His eyes wide, and his mouth agape. “. . . You . . . love . . . me?”

She smiled, and nodded. “I love you with all my heart, Bucky ‘the Winter Soldier’ Barnes. I don’t care if you’re a Beast or a prince. You’re my Bucky, and I will do anything for you.”

He turned back to the road, and silence reigned. Darcy waited, wondering what the consequences of her admission would be, until she began to think that he didn’t feel the same way. Just as tears began to form in her eyes, she heard someone humming. Then, Bucky took a deep breath and began, “ _Look into my eyes, you will see what you mean to me. Search your heart, search your soul, And when you find me there you’ll search no more._ ”

She felt her heart begin to race.

“ _Don’t tell me it’s not worth tryin’ for_  
_You can’t tell me it’s not worth dyin’ for_  
_You know it’s true_  
_Everything I do, I do for you._ ”

___She took a ragged breath, her tears beginning to fall._ _ _

______"Look into my heart, you will find__  
_There’s nothing there to hide_  
_Take me as I am, take my life_  
_I would give it all, I would sacrifice._ ” 

__

______Bucky never sang. It was almost an unwritten rule. Only she and Jane sang._ _ _ _ _ _

____________"Don’t tell me it’s not worth fightin’ for__  
_I can’t help it there’s nothin’ I want more_  
_You know it’s true_  
_Everything I do, I do it for you.”_

__

_________She took another ragged breath and joined him, their voices twining._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________"There’s no love, like your love__  
_And no other could give more love_  
_There’s nowhere unless you’re there_  
_All the time, all the way.”_

__

__

____________Her throaty mezzo-soprano wrapped around his mello tenor._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_______________________“ _Don’t tell me it’s not worth tryin’ for__  
_I can’t help it there’s nothin’ I want more_  
_I would fight for you – I’d lie for you_  
_Walk the wire for you_  
_Yeah, I’d die for you_  
_You know it’s true,_  
_Everything I do, I do it for you._ ” 

__

__

__

__

__________________The night was silent for what seemed like an eternity before Bucky spoke. “I love you, Darcy Doll.” He reached out and she took his hand._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________“I love you too, Bucky Bear.”_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________~~~~~~~~~~~~~_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

__________________In the back seat, Jane grinned up at the ceiling, while fingering the necklace she now wore. Her grand love story had not worked out, but she was so happy for Darcy and Bucky that it didn’t even matter. In the third row, Sigyn had the same expression and thought._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late update - it's the run up to the start of the school year, and as a teacher I have a lot of stuff taking up my time.
> 
> But again, thank you for all the awesome comments and kudos!


	10. Better than Twilight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony should really know better than to tease the 100 year olds.

_Everything I do, I do it for you._

“ . . . And that’s when we declared our love for each other.” Darcy smiled at Bucky with all the love she felt. He was still staring into her eyes from where they’d sung their duet.

“This is better than _Twilight_ ,” Cara Scott whispered.

“Anything is better than _Twilight_ ,” JC Wilson said, “But I feel what you’re sayin’.” The kids all giggled at that. 

When Bucky looked around at the rest of the Avengers, he nearly laughed out loud at Steve. He was sitting back in his chair next to Bucky, his hand over his eyes, nearly pinching his nose. Jane was teary eyed as well. She was by no means the only one either. Many of the women had begun crying as soon as Darcy and Bucky had begun to sing to each other. The men had followed, except for Vision who still had a soft look in his eyes. “Wow,” Tony said, “I have a heart.”

Pepper smacked him on the arm. “Stop it,” she said, her eyes red. 

Wanda giggled. “I have never forgotten the first time you sang for us all,” she told the couple from her sectional. (Yes, her sectional because between her powers and Vision’s they could lift it and carry it where ever they liked.) Her brother sat next to her with Sharon holding his hand. 

“Buck used to do that to all the girls,” Steve commented. “He sang, he danced, he was shaping up to be a regular Fred Astaire.”

“Who’s Fred Astaire?” Ferro asked.

“Dude, he’s totes cool,” Sarah Margaret replied. “He’s in a bunch of Dad’s old movies, and he dances with the lady named Ginger Rogers, and they’re amazing dancers.”

“She’s cute as a button!” Rebecca piped up.

“Capscicle, Winter Wonderland, you guys make your kids watch your old man movies?” Tony called out. 

“I don’t know,” Loki said thoughtfully from his fluff lounge area, “I quite enjoyed the one about the Navy. And the one in Paris.”

“Enh,” Steve replied, “ _Follow the Fleet_ ’s okay, but _Roberta_ is one of my favorites.”

Jane laughed out loud, nearly spilling all of her beer. Tony and Rhodey were eyeing Loki speculatively, while Clint shook his head. “I dunno, I liked _Top Hat_.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said taking a sip of his beer, “Me and Stevie saw that in theaters.”

“We saw all of them in theaters,” Steve said. He got a gleam in his eye and glanced over at Bucky. “In our day, we only had theaters!”

“That we had to walk five miles to get to!” Bucky added.

“In the snow!” Steve continued as Tony, Peter, and Pietro tried to shout them down.

“Uphill! Both ways!” Bucky finished. 

“You had to make fun of them being from the 40s,” Rhodey drawled to Tony.

Pietro chuckled, but his son piped up, “So how did the epic bromance get back together?”

“Yeah,” Jacob Coulson called out, “How did the Avengers all get together?”

Steve glanced over at Bucky. “Mind if I take over the story telling?”

“Oo! Oo! Please Dad?” Sarah Margaret called out, “You can also tell us how you fell in love with Mom!”

“That I can,” he said grandly, “But first, there was the little problem of finding a certain super soldier and his girlfriend . . .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this final chapter took so long! It was just waiting for me to have a day off due to a hurricane apparently. >.>
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for reading this series. I hope the next installment will be completed sometime during the next few months. I make no promises though. Til then, thank you so much for reading!


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